Title: Offloading Intra-Server Orchestration to Smart NICs

Speaker: Aditya Akella

Abstract: Orchestrating requests at a datacenter server entails load balancing and scheduling requests belonging to different services across CPUs, and adapting CPU allocation to request bursts. It plays a central role in meeting tight tail latency requirements and ensuring high throughput and optimal CPU utilization. Today’s server-based orchestration approaches are neither scalable nor flexible. In this talk, I will argue for offloading orchestration entirely to the server’s network interface card (NIC). I will present RingLeader, a new programmable “smart” NIC with novel hardware units for software-informed request load balancing and programmable scheduling, and a new light-weight OS-NIC interface that enables close NIC-CPU coordination and supports NIC-assisted CPU scheduling. I will conclude my talk with examples of other ways that smart NICs are changing the landscape of data center computing.

Short Bio: Aditya Akella is a Regents Chair Professor of Computer Science at UT Austin. Aditya received his B. Tech. from IIT Madras (2000), and Ph.D. from CMU (2005). His research spans computer systems and networking, focusing on programmable networks, formal methods in systems, and systems for big data and machine learning. His work has influenced the infrastructure of some of the world’s largest online service providers. Aditya has received many awards for his contributions, including the ACM SIGCOMM Test of Time Award (2022), selection as a finalist for the US Blavatnik National Award for Young Scientists (2020 and 2021), UW-Madison “Professor of the Year” award (2019 and 2017), IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize (2015), SIGCOMM Rising Star award (2014), NSF CAREER award (2008), and several best paper awards.